Please stop making fun of your fellow traders and stick to the subject. "Let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone" said Jesus. Let's all meditate on that for a while.
Seriously. I think writing puts to acquire stock and writing calls against the shares acquired by the previous strategy is pretty conservative.
options will tear you a new one even faster than stocks, though most will lose all their money trading either so its a wash. maybe options are a good way to start so you can blow up quickly and realize you know nothing.
Once again, I plan to keep my current job (yes it is a job), and use that $20K to do conservative option writing strategies and earnings volatility plays. If and only if I am consistently profitable, will I quit working. Then I'll try to leverage my trading experience into working at a prop trading firm.
Do you have trading account by now? If so, post your first trades here, it will be nice watching what you are dealing with.
Prostitution is an entrepreneurial activity, which can be moderately succesful, definetely a more promising career than a large number of alternatives available to young people. It makes much sense that a succesful escort (small business owner) saves money and invest it, not a stretch that he/she'd move to trading (I've known who moved to very diverse activities). 20k in OP's situation _troll or not - sounds too little though. .
I do. I have $20,000 worth of HYG shares sitting in it. After my rent, medication, ad, grooming, cell phone, and internet bills were paid, I put half of the excess into my OptionsXpress account (the other half goes to my checking for fun stuff). I looked for an ETF with low beta, and high dividend yield to park my money. I'll make my first trade on Monday. I'll post it in a new thread. Anyway, I'm going to swing trade for a while. I'm going to try to make $600/month. What capitalization would you recommend?
Watch out for your HYG: The Fed will be 'tapering' its QE program which will be a real downer for bonds. http://bonds.about.com/od/Issues-in...ed-Tapering-And-Its-Impact-On-The-Markets.htm QE is like taking heroin. Makes you feel great today but is hell to get off of.
That's why I'be been selling it off bit by bit over the months. Now, I have a strong aversion to keeping large amounts of uninvested cash, so I've been moving it to 50-50 mix of HVPW and AMLP. I like yields.